Not What I Wanted to Write About

DARVO, ICE and that time a friendship went sour

Friend, I woke up last Saturday fully planning to write about something else, but when I opened my laptop the first thing to hit my eyeballs was this social media post. I read it and thought, “Damn. Now I have to write about this, instead.”

The article, which appears in its entirety here, is about an American citizen who was swept up in an ICE raid and detained in an undisclosed location for 24 hours before being charged with obstruction of justice and released on a $5000 bond. It cites a number of sources, including The Guardian and KTLA.

Here are a few snippets that popped out at me.

Regarding Andrea Velez

As she walked toward her place of employment, Andrea says she looked up and saw an ICE agent barreling toward her…. She instinctively held up her bag and the agent bowled into her.

Followed by:

DHS publicly said she would be charged with “assaulting an officer.”

The article also mentions another instance:

On June 12th, Brian Gavidia walked outside his work and saw immigration officers. He told them he was a US citizen and showed them his Real ID. They pushed him up against a fence and started asking him questions like “What hospital were you born in.” DHS later said he had “assaulted an officer” …

Several years ago I had a friend who was smart and interesting and knew about things I didn’t. One of the things she taught me was the acronym DARVO. It’s an acronym for a manipulation strategy. It stands for “Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.”

• Deny: The perpetrator denies harmful behavior or wrongdoing

• Attack: The perpetrator attacks the accuser's credibility, character, or motives, trying to make them appear untrustworthy or malicious

• Reverse Victim and Offender: The perpetrator flips the narrative, portraying themselves as the victim and the actual victim as the aggressor

Examples: A cheating spouse or shady business partner: When questioned, they deny the bad behavior, then accuse the suspicious partner of either the same act or of trying to sabotage the relationship with false accusations, thus painting themselves as the wronged party.

In sexual assault: a perpetrator denies an incident, then attacks the victim's reputation or motives, then portrays themself as the one harmed by the false accusation.

And then there’s this particular ICE abduction raid:

• Deny: We didn't push her

• Attack: She assaulted an officer

• Reverse Victim and Offender: DHS/ICE is the wronged party

Andrea’s version of the event is supported by witnesses, physics and the fact that although DHS used the word “assault” when speaking to the media, their legal charge was “obstruction,” which implies they knew an assault charge wouldn’t hold up.

***

Whenever something pops out to me as DARVO, I think of my friend, because she taught me, but when I think of that friend, I get sad because ultimately the friendship dissolved in a kind of messy breakup.

The break-up did not involve DARVO—she wasn’t trying manipulate me, she was just angry at me for a number of things. I tried hard not to counter-attack or reverse-blame—but that didn’t keep it from being a fairly awful experience.

She was the kind of person who was more sure about everything than I am about anything. She was so convincingly sure of my ill-intentions that I found myself spending hours lying on the carpet in my office, combing through my own motivations. If I wasn’t guilty of the things she was accusing me of, then I was at least guilty of not being observant enough to sense her growing resentment. To warrant such bitterness, I must have done something wrong.

When I talk about it, which is almost never, I think I should laugh it off — make a joke about what kind of fragile flower I must be to be traumatized by the accusations of one person who wasn’t even my boss or a romantic relationship.

But the truth is, when I think about it, I don’t feel like laughing. My body heats up and my breathing constricts. If I were an actor playing a character who signs a confession for something she didn’t do, this would be the sense memory I’d pull up. I remember how I felt incredibly isolated and how quickly my reality became very tenuous.

***

ICE is not just a powerful personality. It is an entity with actual power and authority. It can put you in a crowded cell or a cold, bright room, shivering in a foil space blanket. If I were Andrea Velez, I wonder how long it would take before I’d start to consider if maybe I did assault that officer? If maybe my instinctive movement to protect myself was aggression?

I don’t regret my efforts to keep an open mind in my conflict with my friend, but I sure hope if I’m ever in a situation like Andrea’s that I’ll have the mental and emotional strength to shut my mind down and keep a grasp on my reality.

Remembering DARVO might help. Something gets named because it exists. Something is given an acronym because its existence is prevalent enough to need one. The pattern is: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

If your government allows its agencies to use DARVO against you while keeping you from your family and lawyers, it is not the good guy.

Hoping to write about something different next time.

xo

B